Beyond the Plan: A Guide to Knowing Which Floor Plan is Your Home
By Lucas on Dec 17, 2013
Floor plan translated into living space (LUX Design)
By Bora Mihalyi Design Editor at LUX Design
You walk into a showroom. It's almost a transcending experience. The outside world gets quiet and soft music fills your ears. A beautiful and ridiculously nice sales lady walks over and offers to show you around. Framed floor plans line the walls like pieces of artwork. She walks you through a few -- you imagine yourself coming home after a long day, opening the door and walking down the hall to your balcony. You see the living room, where you can put your feet up after a long day of work, the kitchen, where all the delicious meals and cocktails will be prepared, the bedroom, where you will have restful slumbers. It's going to be great. Life is going to be perfect.
Finding the perfect home is enjoyable (and can include a few daydreams), and the more you know about your future condo, the better choice you will make. With proper preparation and the right questions, you won't get woken up by a harsh reality. The first step is to make sense of the floor plans. Think of these drawings like a map of your house. You want to know how to read it before you choose it as a destination.
Example of a furniture plan (LUX Design)
Square footage technically should not be in Canada. We are a metric country, yet our construction industry has been confused by our neighbour. What does it mean to have an 800 square foot apartment versus one that is 1,500 square feet? The best way to tell just how much space you are going to have is to look at the doors. Since they are standard, each interior door is going to be three feet or one meter long. This will help you better understand the room sizes you are looking at. If you are still confused, contact a professional. A few hours with an interior designer can save you not just money but a huge headache down the road when you realize that you can't get your bed into the bedroom.
Make sure to ask which way your apartment is facing. When purchasing a condo, there are usually different placement options for the same plan. This is not just so you can have a better view or avoid highways but also because of changing light quality. For the most amount of natural light, a south-facing apartment is best. If you love the morning light, an east facing apartment is the right choice. This small but important choice can affect the feel of a home tremendously.
In the case of a full glass facade, the sales staff will also let you know about the types of windows you will have (since they will take up an entire wall of your condo). There are three major factors for glazing; noise, temperature and UV screening. Noise and temperature are both solved with Thermopane windows or Insulated glass. This just means that there are two panes of glass separated by trapped air. This air acts as an insulator, reducing the amount of heat loss in winter or containing the chilled air in the summer. The UV filter is less for your skin and more for your furniture and flooring. You can wear sunscreen, but most materials are very sensitive to the sun’s rays. This causes the dulling of hardwood, fabrics and paint over time. A simple film applied to the glass plane can prevent and preserve everything inside.
View from front entrance (LUX Design)
Be sure to ask where the lighting and the outlets will be placed. Changing the electrical after you move into a condo building is messy and costly. After you know approximately where you plan to put the furniture, see if the lighting matches up. Some developers leave out the overhead lighting completely in the bedroom, so if that is something that would drive you crazy, make sure to get it sorted before construction starts.
As far as partitions (or walls) are concerned, the Ontario Building Code does a pretty good job at protecting you. Safety first, they are usually fire retardant for at least one hour. However, there is another rating, the STC or the Sound Transmission Class. This tells you how much noise is able to travel through a wall. An interior wall, for example, between a living room and the bedroom, should be at least a 33 (standard wall with no insulation) - which means you can hear loud speech but a normal voice would not be understood. The wall between you and your neighbour is a whole different story. Unless you share the same taste in music, make sure the STC rating is at least a 45. In this case, loud speech is not audible. Anything below a 40 will start a war.
Picking a floor plan and purchasing a condo is exciting. The showrooms are gems of framed dreams available for purchase. With a little insight and a few questions, you will get not just a condo, but a space you love to come home to.
Bora Mihalyi is the Design Editor at LUX Design, a Toronto-based interior design firm specializing in unique, luxurious concepts for commercial and residential spaces. You can visit LUX Design at www.luxdesign.ca and www.thecondoquickie.com.
